


Friends in Other Places

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the war, Swindle got involved with Smokescreen. Every so often, he lived to regret it. This is one of those times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends in Other Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ayngelcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayngelcat/gifts).



This was the pit.

Swindle sat on the bunk, elbows on his knees, and tried not to let his tyres bump against anyone else. He tried not to vent either, his olfactory sensors already overwhelmed by the stink of old oil and sour joint lubricant. He shouldn’t be here. And he wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for that no-good idiot Autobot wannabe he had, for some stupid reason, got himself involved with.

“Shove up, runt.” A mech the size and approximate shape of the kind of asteroid that caused mass extinctions loomed over him. It sneered.

Swindle winced and edged towards the wall. If only there wasn’t a femme in the way. And if only she wasn’t the kind of femme who’d likely rip his arms off if he so much as looked at her. Yeah, this really wasn’t his kind of place.

He glanced longingly at the exit. Energon bars sizzled, the only barrier between him and freedom.

The asteroid-mech squeezed in beside him, lumpy grey hips scraping against Swindle’s nice new paintjob.

He sighed. Smokescreen was a moron. Worse than that, he was an amiable, helpful, happy moron with advanced social skills and really good taste in high grade. He was fun to be around. He was good at concocting plans, and – usually – really good at carrying them out. Just not this time.

No. This time, he’d slagged up something chronic. And, as these things went, the mech with the good rep and the high class friends got off with a fine and a slap on the aft while Swindle was left to rust in some pit-forsaken Iacon jail.

They wouldn’t even deport him to Kaon. Probably because they know who _his_ friends were.

He cleared his cache for the fifteenth time that joor and glanced around. There had to be someone here he could strike up a conversation with. Someone who could help relieve the boredom. Who could, potentially, become an ally. Maybe a customer. Maybe a friend.

He caught a few optics, but a flash of his open, hopeful smile only earned him glowering, resentful looks. Swindle decided he didn’t like Iacon.

“Back from the bars!”

Another immense mech appeared, this time in official livery, and on the other side of the cell door. There was a general crushing shuffle, as the mechs closest to the bars – and thus to a supply of (comparatively) clean, fresh air – moved back.

Swindle’s view was cut off by a small red aft and the curve of a wing. In any other circumstance, he might not complain, but here and now it was damned annoying.

“Prisoner 25468736, step forward.”

A little light began to flash in his HUD. 25468736, that was him. Oh slag.

Swindle eased himself off his seat, clenching his denta against the squeal of his hips as he tugged himself out from the gap between the massive femme and Asteroid Mech.

“Prisoner 25468736, now!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Swindle cried. Couldn’t he see it was tighter than a pack of sharkticons in here? Probably could and he didn’t care, cold-cored bastard. Swindle’s engine stuttered, his actuator giving a weird little twinge. It didn’t bode well that the trial was so soon. Where the slag was his legal team?

The guard grunted and switched off the bars. Twin blasters on his shoulders whined, caution against anyone getting the wrong idea.

Swindle stepped through, hearing the hiss of reactivation, but not wanting to look back.

“This way.”

He followed the guard, head down, optics focused on the backs of the guard’s massive pedes. He had leg mounted cannons as well, and a sonic displacer rifle in a holster at his hip. No wonder they hadn’t bothered to cuff him, Swindle thought. The guard was a walking deterrent.

“Through here.”

Down another corridor and into a small, boxy room. No window, just an air vent leading up to slag knew where.

“Sign this.”

Swindle stared. It was his stuff. On the table. His pistol, his data pad, all the contents of his drawers and compartments he’d been forced to hand over when they first brought him here. All of it, and he could have it back.

“Sentence got commuted,” the guard said. “All you got is a fine, and someone paid it.”

When Swindle continued to stare, the guard leant down to his level, his tiny orange optics blazing.

“Obviously,” he said, “you got friends. Personally, I can’t see why, but my shift lets up as soon as I get your stupid aft out of here, so sign the fraggin’ form and we can all go home.”

Outside, the air was crisp, the last damp trace of acid rain a gleaming film over roads and buildings. Swindle was caught between a kind of flighty ecstasy, and the type of dread that always cropped up when he owed someone big time and had no idea who it was.

“You need a lift?”

He jumped, his engine coughing, then laughed as the shadows congealed in a recess between buildings, revealing the rain-slick purple and brown of Onslaught’s Head of Logistics.

Well, that answered that one.

Swindle grinned. “Sure thing.”


End file.
